Dropping the Ball
by Swordsoul2000
Summary: Starfleet cleans up Tarsus IV


Dropping the Ball

Cleaning up Tarsus IV

Star Trek, in all of its various forms and guises, does not belong to me.

//\\

"C'mon Ray, you can't let that kid get to you." The words seemed to have no effect of Lt. Raymond Vicente. Huddled in the transport, he closed his eyes and tried to block out the horrors of the scene he had just seen.

Starfleet had only learned recently of the famine that had abruptly hit the colony of Tarsus IV about a month ago. That was bad enough. What was worse; was that a madman calling himself Governor Kodos had seized control of the colony and systematically exterminated half the population, ostensibly to extend the food supply.

Bodies lay everywhere, mostly adults, some kids. The worst thing about that was that the death squads, marked by the red bandanas around their necks, were kids themselves: the oldest only in their late teens. Some of them were dead, killed in the fighting as Starfleet retook the colony, others had fled, and no one knew where they went. But all that death, all that pointless death, wasn't what was running in a constant loop through Ray's mind. It was something else.

His team had followed several lifesigns to what had been colony's the entertainment center, storming in to find one little girl dead, and four other kids about to die, held at laser point by several members of the death squads. It was obvious that if they'd been just a little bit faster, they would have saved the little girl, barely more than 10 years old, a hole burned straight through her spine. But that wasn't what was haunting him.

It was the oldest boy not wearing a bandana, possibly only 14 years old. It looked like he'd been trying to protect the other kids when Kodos's converts caught up to him. He'd looked like he'd been in deep shock. Unsure of what else to do, Ray had pulled out a blanket to try and keep him warm, and opened a packet of food because he was sure the boy had to be starving after the famine. Instinctively, Ray had also placed his hand on the boy's shoulder like he would for his nephew, trying to impress upon him with that contact that everything was going to be alright now, that Starfleet was here to take care of things, that he didn't have to be strong anymore.

Instead, the boy had freaked out, lashing out with his fists, yelling and screaming at him incoherently. Ray had tried to soothe him the best he could, but it had only made things worse. Finally the kid had ripped a patch off his uniform, crumpled it up and threw it back at him, running off, and disappearing into the night. That had been hours ago, all surviving colonists had since been picked up by the transports and were on their way back to Earth. The boy was long gone, but his words still rang through Raymond Vicente's head. "_You were supposed to save us! You were supposed to be here when we needed you!_"

"Lt. Vicente!" rough hands shook him, jerking him out of him memories. Belatedly, the burn of a slap echoed across his face. He shook his head and looked up, looking into the hard but lovely face of Captain Elizabeth Montgomery. She released him when he finally responded to her, stepping back out of his personal space.

She looked at him, hard. He gave a crooked laugh, and said, "I'll be alright Dragon Face." Then automatically ducked as she swatted at him for using her hated nickname, the routine action balm to his jangled nerves.

The feeling didn't last. As the mood cooled, she gave him one of her 'Dragon faces' the ones she used to scare newbies and enemy combatants into shitting their drawers in fear, letting him know that her friendly persona was buried now, making room for the no-nonsense, SpecOpts Captain.

"Can I count on you?" she asked, not unreasonably, given how catatonic he'd been just a few minutes before. It was an understandable question. Ugly assignments were their specialty, but what happened on Tarsus IV was enough to turn anyone's stomach. To hear from shell-shocked survivors that Kodos had only been in power for four days and had used children… well Ray wasn't going to tease those who had lost control of their stomachs and thrown up. He hadn't been one of them, but knew that he wouldn't be sleeping well for the next few months, at least.

He nodded slowly, not trusting himself to speak. Her face gentled somewhat, but still retained its hard lines. "It's the kid you found, isn't it?" he nodded again.

One of the members of the other teams snorted in derision. "I don't see why you're beating yourself up over this kid for. He's alive isn't he? If you'd been just a little later he'd be dead right? It seems to me as if the kid ought to be grateful you were there."

Ray shook his head. "You weren't there. He blamed Starfleet for everything that happened in the first place."

The wit's tone turned skeptical. "How so? Starfleet only learned about the famine 2 days ago, and only heard about Kodos the day after that. I'd say Starfleet responded pretty damn quickly if you ask me."

"He didn't know that." Ray pointed out, sorrow heavy in his voice. "All he knew was that when Starfleet was needed, we weren't there. That was enough for him." his voice turned pensive. "I don't know who he was, or who his parents are, or were" he amended quickly, no knowing if the boy's parents had been on the colony with their son or not, "but it's clear to me that he was almost _raised_ to be Starfleet, someone who'd believed in the principles we stand for with all his heart. _Someone_ raised that boy from the cradle with the knowledge that Starfleet is _always_ there when its needed, that it drops everything to run to a colony in trouble, and for whatever reason, a madman was able to _shatter_ that dream by appearing right under Starfleet's collective nose and slaughtering a full half of the population of the colony, with him in a front row seat. The dream he's most likely held from childhood has been shattered, and in his mind at least, it's all Starfleet's fault. For him, Tarsus IV happened because Starfleet dropped the ball, allowing Kodos to appear."

"That's harsh, Ray." His partner, Ensign John Gallaway said in mild protest to Ray's words.

Ray simply looked at him. "Is it? You were there, you heard him. Can you tell me anything differently?" the younger man looked away, unable to meet his eyes. Ray knew that John was remembering his own kids, safe on earth living with their mother in Seattle. Two beautiful kids: a little boy, barely two, and a daughter just a few years younger than the dead girl. Alice shared the girl's blond curls as well, and Ray knew that for one heart-stopping instant, his friend had seen his daughter lying face down on the bleachers, flames still licking her flimsy shirt around the laser hole in her spine. The scene had unnerved their whole team, for different reasons. Chief Angie McDaw was huddled in a corner of the shuttle, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold, the formerly steady woman slightly hysterical at the thought of child killers. Ensign Tsr-raq had been stunned by the brutality humans had shown themselves capable of; this had been his first assignment with SpecOpts. Commander Bill Gracie was had also seen his teenaged daughter in the fallen girl, and had gone white as a sheet, disappearing around the corner to lose his lunch, returning a moment later with a frozen expression. Some of them would be leaving SpecOpts after this mission, Ray knew without a doubt. He had to admit, the idea sounded mighty tempting.

And who could blame them, given that the entertainment center had only been the tip of the iceberg, only their first taste of the horrors awaiting them on Tarsus IV. Bodies frozen in agony, some of them obviously trying to run only to be gunned down from behind, preserved by the freezing temperatures that had heralded the famine. The looks of agony on some of the faces, the horribly still bodies of the few dead kids, the shell-shocked expressions of the survivors, the whispers that no one knew if Kodos had indeed died as the body found in the Governor's downed transport seemed to indicate, given that the body had been so badly burned, burned by what had to be more than just exploding plasma, making it impossible to identify. The whispers that no one knew who Kodos had been, not with the fact that Kodos had been an assumed name. The way that some of the survivors had been gulping down rations until medical staff had been forced to restrain them, the way that some of the littlest kids admitted that they hadn't had any food at all for the past few days. Any of it was enough to sicken the most hardened soul, even one used to the sights they saw on any SpecOpts mission. All in just four days.

And the worst part about it, was that the kid had been _right_. If Starfleet had been there in time, not only the little girl in the entertainment center could have been saved, but all of them, all the colonists. Kodos hadn't needed to seize power, the Vulcan supply ships had made an early run that year because of a similar but less virulent blight on a different colony world had made them logically conclude that extra foodstuffs would be required on all similar worlds, including Tarsus IV. There had been enough unspoiled food in the storehouses for all eight thousand colonists to last, with a bit of rationing, until well after the Vulcan ships were projected to arrive. It was all so unnecessary, that if Starfleet hadn't dropped the ball, that if they'd paid more attention to the colony worlds, that if they'd maintained the ground-based subspace links better (the one on Tarsus IV had been damaged), Kodos, and the massacres here, wouldn't have happened.

"I'll say this for the kid," Commander Gracie said abruptly into the silence. "Whoever he was, he was a real hero, trying to save those other kids. If he doesn't go into Starfleet because of what happened here, it would be a real shame, because we need more people like him if we want to keep Tarsus IV from happening again." There were nods and murmurs of agreement all around.

Listening to them, Ray replayed again his memory of the kid's wails, the cries of that shattered childlike belief that Starfleet would make everything all right, and knew that it would take more than a miracle for the kid to ever trust Starfleet again, that if Starfleet wanted to prevent another Tarsus IV from happening again, it would have to find other heroes to do the job. This hero had lost his faith in Starfleet, and several miracles, not to mention luck, guile, and a fair bit of maneuvering on some clever individual's part, would be required to get that boy to believe in it again.

//\\

a little drabble I wrote based on William Shattner's new Kirk book. Read it, it's good. What really struck me reading it, is the total lack of coverage Tarsus IV gets, I think I found one story that brought it up on . that surprised me, given that it seemed obvious to me that such an event had an enormous impact on Kirk's emotional development, something who's scars, wouldn't easily fade. In the book, young Kirk has a flashback that I wanted to tell the other side of the story, wanted to explore how the 14 year-old's outburst effected the Starfleet security officer who taken the brunt of it. I won't say more, for fear of spoiling the story if any of you decide to find the book and read it, which I totally recommend. For those who are interested, the book is called: Star Trek Academy, Collision Course, and is totally amazing.

Review and tell me what you think.


End file.
